The CIA has been dealing drugs since before it was the CIA; already in its first days, as the OSS during WW II it was managing the trade, and directing the criminal proceeds to the places of its masters choosing. The US completed its invasion of Afganistan in 2001 in the middle of the opium planting season. Among the first things the US forces and the CIA did was to liberate a number of known opium warlords who, they said, would assist US forces. Former CIA asset and opium warlord Ayub Afridi was released from prison and recruited by the CIA to unify local leaders against the Taliban. In June of 2002 Afganistan again became the worlds largest producer of herion and opium poppy. According to the UN the estimted harvest under CIA protection was close to 3,700 tons. March of 2003, World Bank President James Wolfensohn was reporting record levels of opium production and that drugs were a bigger earner for Afganistan than foreign aid. Reuters reported it to be 36 times higher then under the last year of Taliban rule. The CIA and US Department of Justice made an arbitary decision that anyone who worked for the CIA (wether a full time employee or contractor, or employee of a CIA proprietary company) who did not hold "officer" rank within the agency was deemed not to be an employee. Furthermore it was decided that "no formal requirment" for the reporting of violations of drug laws was going to be required under the newly reached memorandum of understating. Proof of this surfaced when Congresswoman Maxine Waters received a copy of this memorandum. The CIA had now been absolved from turning in its employees and contractors who were soon found to be smuggling cocaine. I could go on about the C130's but that is another story.
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